This has been making the rounds.
If you didn't already know, our office holders receive pensions. Yes, a sum of money after they quit for the rest of their lives.
It's in the government statutes here - PARLIAMENTARY PENSIONS ACT
Who is an office holder? - The term office holder includes the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker, Senior Minister, Minister, Senior Minister of State, Minister of State, Mayor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Parliamentary Secretary or Political Secretary.
How much? - Depending of length of service, office holders can get a maximum of 2/3 of their annual last drawn salary as an annual pension. For example, PM Lee earns S$3.87m a year now, will get at least S$2.58m a year when he retires. Mah Bow Tan will get at least S$1.8m a year. Vivian Balakrishnan will get S$800k for his 9 years in ministerial office if he retires this year.
Pension lumpsum - Pensions can be paid out in lumpsum if the office holder retiree so chooses. For this purpose the annual pension sum payable is multiplied by a 'prescribed commutation factor' to be decided by the President. Someone who sent an email out about this reckons this number to be 14.6. So if a minister's annual salary is S$2m when he retires, he can ask for S$29.2m in one go.
Taxes on pension - None. See government statutes INCOME TAX ACT section (h)
What about the rest of the civil service? - The rest of the civil service was converted away from the pension scheme to CPF some time ago. So ministerial office is only civil service position in SG that allows for pensions now.
So what's the problem? - After the facts, this is an opinion - These guys already are the highest paid politicians in the world. Seriously, it's a lot of money. Aren't they also saving up for their retirement like the rest of us? We private sector folks will get nothing when we retire (hopefully). MM has encouraged us to keep on working into our 60s and 70s - is it so that our continuing tax payments would fund their pensions? Talk about skewing the rich-poor gap. I'm not cool with it.
If you didn't already know, our office holders receive pensions. Yes, a sum of money after they quit for the rest of their lives.
It's in the government statutes here - PARLIAMENTARY PENSIONS ACT
Who is an office holder? - The term office holder includes the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker, Senior Minister, Minister, Senior Minister of State, Minister of State, Mayor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Parliamentary Secretary or Political Secretary.
How much? - Depending of length of service, office holders can get a maximum of 2/3 of their annual last drawn salary as an annual pension. For example, PM Lee earns S$3.87m a year now, will get at least S$2.58m a year when he retires. Mah Bow Tan will get at least S$1.8m a year. Vivian Balakrishnan will get S$800k for his 9 years in ministerial office if he retires this year.
Pension lumpsum - Pensions can be paid out in lumpsum if the office holder retiree so chooses. For this purpose the annual pension sum payable is multiplied by a 'prescribed commutation factor' to be decided by the President. Someone who sent an email out about this reckons this number to be 14.6. So if a minister's annual salary is S$2m when he retires, he can ask for S$29.2m in one go.
Taxes on pension - None. See government statutes INCOME TAX ACT section (h)
What about the rest of the civil service? - The rest of the civil service was converted away from the pension scheme to CPF some time ago. So ministerial office is only civil service position in SG that allows for pensions now.
So what's the problem? - After the facts, this is an opinion - These guys already are the highest paid politicians in the world. Seriously, it's a lot of money. Aren't they also saving up for their retirement like the rest of us? We private sector folks will get nothing when we retire (hopefully). MM has encouraged us to keep on working into our 60s and 70s - is it so that our continuing tax payments would fund their pensions? Talk about skewing the rich-poor gap. I'm not cool with it.
